investing Daily Article of the Week

by Chad Fraser, Investing Daily

Reports of solar power's death are greatly exaggerated.

That's the thrust of two recent reports from the International Energy Agency (IEA). Taken together, they say solar could be the world's top electricity source by 2050, beating out wind, hydro, nuclear-even fossil fuels.

By the middle of the century, the global energy watchdog says solar photovoltaic systems-including household rooftop setups-could be quietly churning out up to 16% of the world's electricity. Concentrating solar power (CSP) plants would chip in another 11%.

Of course, any attempt to predict energy markets 35 years in the future is something less than a crapshoot, and the IEA is careful to point out that these aren't forecasts. Instead, it refers to them as “roadmaps” designed to show the policies and technological leaps needed to hit these targets.

But outlandish or no, these “roadmaps” did focus attention on the fact that the solar business is on the upswing-and investors ought to be paying attention.

Solar Power by the Numbers

The IEA's news comes after the June release of REN21's Renewables 2014 Global Status Report, which contained even sunnier figures. Robert Rapier, chief strategist at our Energy Forecaster service, calls this yearly report card “the most comprehensive report available when it comes to the renewable energy picture.”

Here are four things it revealed about the solar photovoltaic industry's growth last year: